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Speaker 1: Guess what, mango? What's that? Will? All right? So tell

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Speaker 1: me this doesn't sound like a great premise for a movie.

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Speaker 1: About a century ago, a young woman from a small

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Speaker 1: town in Indiana heads off to college to study poetry

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Speaker 1: and philosophy. Now she does this against her father's will,

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Speaker 1: by the way, So she finishes college, travels to Chicago

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Speaker 1: to figure out what to do with her life. Already

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Speaker 1: following so far, because here's where the crazy plot twist

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Speaker 1: comes in. She's about to give up, and then she's

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Speaker 1: discovered and hired by this really eccentric tycoon, makes a

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Speaker 1: major shift in her life and realizes she has this

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Speaker 1: remarkable ability to break codes. She then goes on to

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Speaker 1: become one of the greatest code breakers in history, helps

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Speaker 1: the US win World War One, helps US defeat the

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Speaker 1: Nazis in World War Two, and plays a major role

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Speaker 1: in building the foundation for the intelligence agencies in the

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Speaker 1: USA today. Boom, what do you think about this? I'd

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Speaker 1: watched that movie, yeah, and it should be a movie.

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Speaker 1: But here's the thing, it's all true and thanks to

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Speaker 1: the years of research and writing by Jason Fagoni, we

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Speaker 1: now have a brilliant book. It's called The Woman who

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Speaker 1: smashed codes and it tells the story of Elizabeth Smith Friedman.

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Speaker 1: I can't stop thinking about this story, so let's dive ina.

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Speaker 1: Hey there, podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm

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Speaker 1: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good

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Speaker 1: friend Mangesh Ticketer and on the other side of the

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Speaker 1: soundproof glass obsessing over his new decoder ring and what's

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Speaker 1: he doing. He's he's like he's communicating with us in

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Speaker 1: some sort of new language of signals. He and he's

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Speaker 1: always so impressive. Mango, that's our that's our friend and

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Speaker 1: producer Tristan McNeil. Now today we're talking about one of

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Speaker 1: the most fascinating people history almost forgot and honestly might

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Speaker 1: have forever had it not been for the book we're

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Speaker 1: talking about today. I know it's it's just this incredible story.

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Speaker 1: And when you started telling me about it, I'll be honest,

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Speaker 1: I really didn't think it could be true. I mean,

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Speaker 1: like this poet learning code breaking and then taking down

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Speaker 1: Nazis and gangsters and cracking codes with pretty much this

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Speaker 1: relative ease, like it just sounded too good. And especially

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Speaker 1: since you know, we've done a lot of stories and

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Speaker 1: I've never really heard of Elizabeth Smith Friedman before I

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Speaker 1: know it's it's honestly why I can't stop talking about

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Speaker 1: that story. You really haven't stopped talking about it for

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Speaker 1: a while. Well, I'm thrilled we finally have the right

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Speaker 1: person on the line to talk about this story, and

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Speaker 1: that's the author of The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Jason Fagoni. So, Jason,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Part Time Genius. Hey, thanks, guys, I'm glad

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Speaker 1: to be here. Well, Jason, I want to jump straight

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Speaker 1: into this this really bizarre break that Elizabeth got, you know,

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Speaker 1: becoming a code breaker, And of course we want to

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Speaker 1: ask you about how you even stumbled into this story.

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Speaker 1: But first, can you set the scene a little bit

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Speaker 1: and just talk about what her early life was like

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Speaker 1: before she got this big break. Yeah. So it's one

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Speaker 1: of these kind of classic American tales. You have a

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Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, a young woman in her early

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Speaker 1: twenties is bored with her life and board with her job.

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Speaker 1: She lives in a small town, uh in Midwest, in

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Speaker 1: rural Indiana where she's from. She's teaching high school and

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Speaker 1: for a bright young woman in nineteen fifteen, nineteen sixteen,

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Speaker 1: this is kind of the end of the line right there,

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Speaker 1: there is not really um a lot of opportunity beyond

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Speaker 1: teaching school. Elizabeth was extremely intelligent, ambitious, and brave, and

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Speaker 1: she decided in June nine, sixteen, to take a risk.

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Speaker 1: She quit her job teaching school and she moved to

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Speaker 1: the big city, to Chicago, to look for something more unusual.

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Speaker 1: And that was really all she wanted, was something a

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Speaker 1: little bit more unusual. That brought her to a library

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Speaker 1: in Chicago, the Newberry Library that happened to have a

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Speaker 1: rare volume of Shakespeare from sixteen twenty three was the

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Speaker 1: Shakespeare First Saffolio. And she happened to love Shakespeare. She

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Speaker 1: had studied Shakespeare in school. She was a poet by training,

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Speaker 1: literature scholar, and she just kind of wanted to see

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Speaker 1: this rare book. She she hadn't had any luck finding

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Speaker 1: a job in Chicago. She spent about a week, week

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Speaker 1: and a half they're looking for work, had no luck.

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Speaker 1: She was about ready to go back home and move

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Speaker 1: in with her parents back in Indiana, but she made

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Speaker 1: this one final stop at this library to see this

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Speaker 1: Shakespeare book, and she happened to have a chance meeting

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Speaker 1: there with an eccentric tycoon named George Fabian that that

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Speaker 1: ended up transforming her life, but not just her life, Uh,

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Speaker 1: it ended up changing the shape of the twentieth century.

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Speaker 1: And to be clear, like she hadn't studied any code breaking, right,

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Speaker 1: Like she was um more a liberal arts type, is

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Speaker 1: that right? Yeah, absolutely she was. She was a poet

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Speaker 1: in a literature person. So and this is one of

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Speaker 1: the surprising things about the story and one of the

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Speaker 1: things that pulled me in from the from the first

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Speaker 1: day I began to read her letters, is that I

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Speaker 1: think we we kind of think of code breakers as mathematicians.

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Speaker 1: We have this image of the code breakers as someone

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Speaker 1: like allan turning professional mathematician, math professor. But the fact

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Speaker 1: is code breakers often come from unusual places because the

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Speaker 1: core thing about code breaking is it's really about seeing patterns.

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Speaker 1: The code breaking is the science of solving a secret

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Speaker 1: message without knowing the key. Um. It's akin to if

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Speaker 1: you've ever solved the cryptogram and the in the puzzle

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Speaker 1: page in the paper. Um. Elizabeth was doing this at

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Speaker 1: a sort of more sophisticated level than than most people.

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Speaker 1: But it's the same principle. You you you sort of

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Speaker 1: take a block of letters that looks like gobbledygook. You

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Speaker 1: chop them into their constituent parts, you whirl them around,

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Speaker 1: count them and measure them and rearrange them into their

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Speaker 1: original order. And um, Elizabeth was a genius at seeing patterns.

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Speaker 1: Even though she wasn't mathematically trained, she she had a

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Speaker 1: genius for seeing patterns. And that, uh, that's one of

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Speaker 1: the things that made her one of the one of

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Speaker 1: the most important code breakers of her era. And before

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Speaker 1: she was doing the code breaking, that obviously, you know,

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Speaker 1: changed the world. And in many ways, it was an

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Speaker 1: interest first project. I mean, can you talk a little

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Speaker 1: bit about Fabian because he seemed like such a bizarre character,

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Speaker 1: and and how this meeting came to be, and and

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Speaker 1: and what she was actually asked to do in her

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Speaker 1: first assignment with him. So Elizabeth went to this library,

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Speaker 1: the Newberry Library, to see this rare book of Shakespeare,

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Speaker 1: and she having to fall into conversation with the librarian

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Speaker 1: there who saw that she was interested in Shakespeare. The

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Speaker 1: librarian comes over and says, you know, it's funny, but

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Speaker 1: there's this odd, rich guy who keeps coming to the

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Speaker 1: library looking at the same book of Shakespeare. He's convinced

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Speaker 1: that there are secret messages embedded inside inside this book

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Speaker 1: that have been planted there by the true author of

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Speaker 1: Shakespeare's plays. He thinks that the true author is actually

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Speaker 1: this guy who is a contemporary of Shakespeare's named Francis Bake.

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Speaker 1: So the librarian is telling Elizabeth this, and the librarian says, uh,

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Speaker 1: this rich guy, George Fabian. He says he's been looking

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Speaker 1: for a research assistant. Would you be interested in something

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Speaker 1: like that? Elisabeth says, oh, sure, you know, maybe possibly.

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Speaker 1: The librarian makes a phone call to the George Fabian.

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Speaker 1: George Fabian ends up coming to the library immediately, bringing

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Speaker 1: bringing his chauffeurg limousine. He pulls up in front of

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Speaker 1: the Newberry Library and this limo and he tumbles out

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Speaker 1: of the limousine and Elizabeth Smith looks at George Fabian

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Speaker 1: for the first time, and what she sees is an

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Speaker 1: enormous human being. He is six foot for two pounds,

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Speaker 1: big iron gray beard. Uh. He just he just sort

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Speaker 1: of stomps towards her. Uh. He has big red face,

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Speaker 1: and he's sort of full of energy and intent, and

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Speaker 1: he's basically towering over her. Because Elizabeth is very petite.

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Speaker 1: She's about five ft three and about a hundred and

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Speaker 1: ten pounds um. And he looks at her and he says,

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Speaker 1: would you like to come to Riverbank and spend the

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Speaker 1: night with me? This is you know, this is a

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Speaker 1: completely scandalous question. Uh. You know, Elizabeth's from this from

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Speaker 1: a fairly devout Quaker family, and and um, and she

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Speaker 1: doesn't even know what to say to this. She doesn't

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Speaker 1: know what Riverbank is, and said she she kind of

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Speaker 1: stammers reply, and she says, well, sir, I don't have

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Speaker 1: anything to to sleep in. I don't have any of

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Speaker 1: my nightclothes or my or my or my toiletries or

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Speaker 1: anything like that. And he says, oh, don't mind that.

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Speaker 1: We'll we'll set you up with all of that. Come on,

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Speaker 1: and and and this guy, George Fabian, grabs her by

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Speaker 1: the arm and sort of walks her out to his

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Speaker 1: limousine and and takes her to the Chicago and Northwestern

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Speaker 1: train station. And from there, Uh, she has brought to

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Speaker 1: this place called river Bank. And what river Bank is

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Speaker 1: is one of the most bizarre institutions in America at

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Speaker 1: that time, nineteen sixteen. So George, baby, and it turns

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Speaker 1: out is a Chicago textile multimillionaire. He's made his fortune

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Speaker 1: by selling different kinds of cloth, and he has kind

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Speaker 1: of a marketing genius for selling different kinds of cloth

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Speaker 1: to department stores. Um. Classic kind of self made guys.

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Speaker 1: He's a high school dropout, he's not educated, but he

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Speaker 1: has a lot of money, and he has kind of

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Speaker 1: the ability in the Gilded Age to build a kingdom

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Speaker 1: around himself and to and to kind of set the

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Speaker 1: rules for everybody in his orbit. And um, he's a

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Speaker 1: lot like someone like Andrew Carnegie or William Randolph Hurst,

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Speaker 1: these these guys with that era who just had more

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Speaker 1: money than God. What distinguished George Fabian from those guys

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Speaker 1: is that, you know, instead of spending his money on

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Speaker 1: French Impressionist paintings or you know, building a big castle,

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Speaker 1: what really interested George Fabian was discovering the secrets of nature.

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Speaker 1: He was really into science. He wanted to discover things

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Speaker 1: about nature that had never been discovered. And so he

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Speaker 1: turned his private estate, which was called River Bank, into

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Speaker 1: a kind of half rich man's fantasy land and half

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Speaker 1: private scientific laboratory, very much like Thomas Edison's Menlo Park,

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Speaker 1: New Jersey or Nikola Tesla's Lab in New York. It

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Speaker 1: was a place where, you know, a single committed person

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Speaker 1: with a lot of money had built a scientific laboratory

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Speaker 1: and institution to investigate secrets of nature. And there was

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Speaker 1: all kinds of experiments happening at Riverbank to There was

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Speaker 1: genetics experiments, agriculture experiments, acoustical experiments, and then there was

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Speaker 1: this project that George Fabian wanted Elizabeth Smith to work on,

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Speaker 1: which was the Bacon Cipher Project, the project of discovering

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Speaker 1: these secret messages inside the works of Shakespeare, ripping them

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Speaker 1: out and translating them into the plain text, and revealing

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Speaker 1: the secrets of this Shakespeare book to the world. And

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Speaker 1: that's that's what he told Elizabeth he wanted her to

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Speaker 1: do when he went that day, when he met her

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Speaker 1: in the library and whisked her off on the train

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Speaker 1: to Riverbank. He wanted her to help him discover the

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Speaker 1: secrets that were indebted in Shakespeare and sort of sort

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Speaker 1: of transformed the history of English literature. It's just it's

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Speaker 1: just unbelievable to think about. I think about the number

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Speaker 1: of hours, Mango, that you and I spent just sitting

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Speaker 1: in libraries hoping that some eccentric tycoon would come along

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Speaker 1: and discover us and lisk us away and it just

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Speaker 1: it never happened, but it was. It's it's fascinating to

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Speaker 1: read about it, to to think about our fantasy of that.

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Speaker 1: But yet, so so that project, that's Shakespeare project didn't

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Speaker 1: exactly go you know, anywhere big from there. But but

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Speaker 1: but can you tell us, like, how did she end

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Speaker 1: up making this transition from trying to figure out the

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Speaker 1: code within Shakespeare and seeing if there was any truth

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Speaker 1: to this too what she eventually ended up doing and

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Speaker 1: some of the very serious code breaking. Sure, that's a

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Speaker 1: great question. So so she's brought out to Riverbank, knowing

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Speaker 1: nothing about code breaking. She's immediately plunged into this project

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Speaker 1: to find secret messages in Shakespeare. And she can't find them.

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Speaker 1: And she's there for months and months and months, and

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Speaker 1: she's still having having trouble, you know, discovering these secret messages.

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Speaker 1: Ultimately she concludes that it's all a wild goose chase,

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Speaker 1: it's all kind of a grand delusion. The secret messages

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Speaker 1: aren't actually there. What's happening is that George Fabian and

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Speaker 1: the people who believe what he believe are kind of

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Speaker 1: seeing what they want to see. This is the thing

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Speaker 1: about human beings is that we're we're very good at

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Speaker 1: seeing patterns. Were all kind of born to do it.

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Speaker 1: And sometimes we're so good at seeing patterns that we

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Speaker 1: end up seeing patterns that aren't really there, right, and uh,

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Speaker 1: and this is what was happening. They thought they saw

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Speaker 1: these messages in the works of Shakespeare that weren't really there.

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth had to figure this out. Um. But what that

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Speaker 1: experience did is, you know, being dropped into this kind

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Speaker 1: of delusion. It made her very interested and well, if

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Speaker 1: I wanted to find patterns that really were there, and

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Speaker 1: if I wanted to be sure that they were there,

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Speaker 1: how would I do that? How would I develop a method?

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Speaker 1: How would I develop a system to make sure that

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Speaker 1: I wasn't tricking myself? And so, beginning in this kind

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Speaker 1: of world of delusion um inspired her to try to

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Speaker 1: create a true method and a true scientific system for

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Speaker 1: discovering patterns in in these blocks of gobbledygook. And that's

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Speaker 1: what launched her on her code breaking career, sort of

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Speaker 1: in confluence with this other thing that happened, which is

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Speaker 1: a year after she got to River Bank, America, entered

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Speaker 1: World War One, so April nineteen seventeen, you know, America

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Speaker 1: enters the war, and at that point, you know, it's

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Speaker 1: amazing for me to go back and learn this history

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Speaker 1: because you know, I had always kind of assumed that

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Speaker 1: the American intelligence community that we that we know today

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Speaker 1: that's mighty and powerful, the National Security Agency, the CIA,

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Speaker 1: the FBI. I had always assumed that these institutions are

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Speaker 1: always kind of always powerful and had always existed. But

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Speaker 1: you know, in nineteen seventeen, when America entered World War One,

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Speaker 1: there really was no American intelligence community. There was no

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Speaker 1: n s A, there was no CIA, and the FBI

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Speaker 1: was very young. And one of the things that you

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Speaker 1: need to do when you're going to war is, you know,

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Speaker 1: you need to read the secret messages that the enemy

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Speaker 1: is sending. You need to know what they're saying and

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Speaker 1: what they're doing so you can have an advantage. The

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Speaker 1: thing is, you know, when America went to World War

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Speaker 1: in World War One in nineteen seventeen, uh, it had

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Speaker 1: no ability to do that. There were maybe five people

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Speaker 1: in the entire United States who even knew what a

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Speaker 1: code or a cipher and so, uh it just so

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Speaker 1: happened that some of these five people were Elizabeth and

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Speaker 1: her colleagues at Riverbank Laboratories, this bizarre private institution run

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Speaker 1: by a crazy rich guy on the Illinois Prairie. It's

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Speaker 1: one of these things, you know, truth is stranger than fiction,

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Speaker 1: and American history is very, very weird. It gets very

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Speaker 1: very weird, very very fast when you get beyond the surface.

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Speaker 1: So what happened is, you know, through the urgency of war,

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Speaker 1: the necessity of war, you know, the War Department, the

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Speaker 1: Army realized they didn't have any code breakers and they

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Speaker 1: needed code breakers very quickly. So, uh, just out of desperation,

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Speaker 1: they ended up kind of annexing Riverbank Laboratories, which became

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Speaker 1: kind of the first national security agency. The War Department

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Speaker 1: and other departments of the U. S. Government began to

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Speaker 1: send uh, secret messages that they couldn't read out to Riverbank,

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Speaker 1: and Elizabeth and her colleagues they're working for this crazy tycoon,

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Speaker 1: would solve the messages and send them back to Washington.

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Speaker 1: And for the first eight months of World War One,

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Speaker 1: UM Riverbank, Elizabeth and her colleagues, they're handled the entire

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Speaker 1: code breaking burden for the U. S. Government. While it

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Speaker 1: was at war, which is which is incredible to think about,

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Speaker 1: because you know, you've got to realize Elizabeth is four

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Speaker 1: years old at this time, and she has just learned

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Speaker 1: about code breaking in the last year, but all of

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Speaker 1: a sudden she was the expert and she had to perform.

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Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius. We're chatting with Jason Fagoni,

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Speaker 1: the author of The Woman who Smashed Codes. So, Jason,

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Speaker 1: the whole thing about um, that code breaking really wasn't

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Speaker 1: a thing before is is just kind of stunning to

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Speaker 1: be because I always think about like things in the paper,

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Speaker 1: like the cryptograms, or you think about like uh, Lewis

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Speaker 1: Carroll and anagrams and people playing with words and in

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Speaker 1: crazy ways, But that this art isn't the thing is

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Speaker 1: is just kind of amazing. She also wasn't alone in

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Speaker 1: this endeavor, right, She had a sort of a love

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Speaker 1: interest and partner during this time exactly. She met a

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Speaker 1: young scientist there named William Friedman. And and again it's

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Speaker 1: one of these kind of classic American tales, two young

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Speaker 1: people from very different worlds. Elizabeth was, you know, a

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Speaker 1: Quaker girl from the Midwest. William Friedman was a Jewish scientist,

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Speaker 1: from Pittsburgh. Um, he had been brought to Riverbank to

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Speaker 1: perform genetics experiments. He was breeding fruit flies. Ah, he

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Speaker 1: was trying to breed different varieties of corn and wheat

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Speaker 1: that might take root in different kinds of soil. But

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Speaker 1: the thing about William Freedman is that he he had

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Speaker 1: a talent for photography and a lot of the original

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Speaker 1: work on the Bacon Cipher project. This, this project of

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Speaker 1: finding secret messages in Shakespeare depended on enlarging photographs of uh,

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Speaker 1: the original Shakespeare manuscript, the six Stafolio. So so because

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Speaker 1: William was good with camera and he knew how to

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Speaker 1: develop Prince and in dark Ram, George Fabian roped him

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Speaker 1: into this project. And so William Friedman began to work

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Speaker 1: with Elizabeth Smith on the Shakespeare project and and they

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Speaker 1: both kind of looked at each other around the same

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Speaker 1: time and had this had this epiphany which was, Um,

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Speaker 1: everybody at this place is completely crazy except for us.

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Speaker 1: You know, we are the we might be the only

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Speaker 1: sane people here, and we need to, uh, we need

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Speaker 1: to form a bond to kind of to protect ourselves

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Speaker 1: from these lunatics. And while all of this craziness was

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Speaker 1: swirling around them. Elizabeth and William did something extremely important,

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Speaker 1: which is, together they invented the modern science of cryptology,

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Speaker 1: which today is at the core of our intelligence agencies.

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Speaker 1: So this is a remarkable thing. You know, in the

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Speaker 1: span of about two or three years, starting in nineteen

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Speaker 1: they invented new techniques of code breaking UM that had

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Speaker 1: not been known in America. They wrote papers together, they

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Speaker 1: worked across from each other in the same room, at

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Speaker 1: the same desk, solving puzzles with pencil and paper. You

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Speaker 1: gotta remember, this is before the era of computers. This

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Speaker 1: is all pencil and paper. You're just sitting there with

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Speaker 1: pencil paper in your mind. And because so little was

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Speaker 1: known about code breaking in America, UM, they they very

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Speaker 1: quickly had to invent new techniques. They had to become scientists,

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Speaker 1: and they had to become explorers. And they did that. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And they were able to do it because they just

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Speaker 1: had this They had this bond, this link. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's something kind of miraculous seemed to happen when they

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Speaker 1: worked together. They made each other better UM and and

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Speaker 1: very quickly they started to consider themselves a duo and

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Speaker 1: and a team. UM. After they were married, William even

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Speaker 1: even came up with the name he called them. He

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Speaker 1: called them the Freedman Combination. And you know, and it's

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Speaker 1: interesting because because these papers that they wrote together are

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Speaker 1: known as the Riverbank Publications, and uh uh you know,

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Speaker 1: they've historically been credited to William alone. You know, it's

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Speaker 1: only his name that's on the papers. But I went

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Speaker 1: back and I looked at the early drafts of these publications,

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Speaker 1: which are in the New York Public Library, uh, in

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Speaker 1: their Manuscripts and Archives division. And when you look at

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Speaker 1: the drafts, you see that Elizabeth's handwriting has all over them.

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Speaker 1: In fact, you know her her her name is even

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Speaker 1: typed on some of the type scripts as the author

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Speaker 1: of certain sections of the papers. So I think that

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Speaker 1: for several of the papers, especially the early, the early papers,

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth was every bit the co author, and in fact,

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Speaker 1: William considered her to be the co author too. He

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Speaker 1: referred to the papers as our papers. And uh. The

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Speaker 1: thing that kind of seals the deal from me is that,

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Speaker 1: you know, uh, in his personal archive, which is at

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Speaker 1: a private library in Virginia, he has uh he he

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Speaker 1: kept his own personal copies of the River Bank Publications

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Speaker 1: and on one of them. He actually writes Elizabeth's name

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Speaker 1: as a co author on the cover, even though it's

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Speaker 1: not there in the printed version, and so so she was.

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Speaker 1: She was the co founder I think of modern American cryptology. Wow.

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Speaker 1: And you know when you talk about that, that impact

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Speaker 1: that they had, and I guess finally the War Department

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Speaker 1: wakes up to the fact that maybe they need more

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Speaker 1: than just five people at this weird estate in the

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Speaker 1: middle of nowhere and and decides to start their own

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Speaker 1: code breaking units. But but that doesn't mean the end

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Speaker 1: of it for for William and Elizabeth. Can you talk

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Speaker 1: a little bit about what you know Elizabeth specifically was

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Speaker 1: up to in between the world wars, because she was

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Speaker 1: still very much involved in this world Sure, right, So

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Speaker 1: you're right, the War Department comes to the conclusion that

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Speaker 1: maybe it's not the best idea to have a crazy

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Speaker 1: tycoon handling all of the code breaking bird and forward

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Speaker 1: the United States. Uh, they started, they start to build

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Speaker 1: code breaking teams and capacities in Washington. What happens is, eventually, uh,

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Speaker 1: George Fabian sort of reveals his insanity. He begins to

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Speaker 1: spy on the Freedman's while they're still at Riverbank. He

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Speaker 1: surveils them, he intercepts them, nail. He becomes very controlling.

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Speaker 1: There's a suggestion that he might have sexually harassed Elizabeth

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Speaker 1: while William was serving in France briefly during World War One.

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Speaker 1: William comes back from the war, they both get out

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Speaker 1: of there. They make their escape. They essentially pack up

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Speaker 1: their things in the middle of the night because they're

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Speaker 1: terrified of Fabian and they moved to Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: And this is where they spend the rest of their

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Speaker 1: careers and so um. Initially they're working in Washington, d C.

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Speaker 1: Together starting they both they both start working for the army,

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Speaker 1: and at first they're working in the same room just

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Speaker 1: like they were before, designing new codes for the Army

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Speaker 1: news safer codes for for the use of the dough boys. UM.

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Speaker 1: Pretty quickly, Elizabeth gets bored with that and she quits.

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Speaker 1: She she stays at home and starts to write children's books,

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Speaker 1: which was a long ambition of her. She wanted to

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Speaker 1: write a children's book about the history of the alphabets

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Speaker 1: and show sort of the wonders of the alphabet and

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Speaker 1: the system of of of written communication to it's and

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Speaker 1: young adults. And she also had gave birth to their

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Speaker 1: first child around that time, Barbara daughter, and uh soe

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth is kind of out of the game, right she

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Speaker 1: she's at home, she's writing children's books, she's recovering from labor,

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Speaker 1: and she is a mother. And this is kind of

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Speaker 1: what she thinks she's going to do for the rest

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Speaker 1: rest of her life and her career. But what happens

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Speaker 1: is that men from the government show up on her

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Speaker 1: doorstep and ask herself puzzles for America. And this is

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Speaker 1: this is exactly these are her words, by the way,

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Speaker 1: this is how she put it. She she was kind

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Speaker 1: of a complaint all of her life. She said that

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Speaker 1: men from the government keeps showing up on my doorstep

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Speaker 1: asking me to selve puzzles, and the only way the

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Speaker 1: only way to make them go away is to say

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Speaker 1: yes and agree to do these projects. The problem for

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Speaker 1: Elizabeth is that she was just so good at what

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Speaker 1: she did um she and she had such an unusual

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Speaker 1: set of skills that she became indispensable. And so the

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Speaker 1: government really could not afford to leave her alone. And

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Speaker 1: so at every stage of her career, and men from

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Speaker 1: the government were showing up on our doorstep asking her

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Speaker 1: to confront some kind of challenge for which they were

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Speaker 1: unprepared and and the challenge in nine the first men

428
00:23:13,119 --> 00:23:15,040
Speaker 1: from the government who showed up on her doorstep in DC.

429
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:18,600
Speaker 1: We're from the U. S. Treasury Department, specifically the U. S.

430
00:23:18,640 --> 00:23:21,280
Speaker 1: Coast Guard, and they were asking Elizabeth to help them

431
00:23:21,359 --> 00:23:26,199
Speaker 1: fight the war against organized crime because of prohibition. What

432
00:23:26,280 --> 00:23:28,359
Speaker 1: the Coast Guard needed to make any progress in in

433
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:32,320
Speaker 1: this war against uh these rum runners was code breaking.

434
00:23:32,680 --> 00:23:34,919
Speaker 1: And by the way, these were not gentlemen run runners, right,

435
00:23:34,920 --> 00:23:38,040
Speaker 1: the gentleman rum runners, the guys sort of the the

436
00:23:38,119 --> 00:23:41,040
Speaker 1: small time entrepreneurs with a boat. Yeah, they were out

437
00:23:41,040 --> 00:23:42,760
Speaker 1: of the game by nineteen twenty four. They were. They

438
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:46,000
Speaker 1: were edged out. They were forced out by organized crime,

439
00:23:46,040 --> 00:23:49,000
Speaker 1: by these mafias. And so, uh so, what the Coast

440
00:23:49,000 --> 00:23:51,080
Speaker 1: Guard needed to make any progress was code breaking. They

441
00:23:51,119 --> 00:23:53,720
Speaker 1: needed someone like Elizabeth to come in look at the

442
00:23:53,760 --> 00:23:58,520
Speaker 1: intercepted radio messages, you know, solve them and light up

443
00:23:58,560 --> 00:24:00,960
Speaker 1: this dark and underworld too, that the Coast Guard would

444
00:24:00,960 --> 00:24:03,240
Speaker 1: be able to catch these boats and put these guys

445
00:24:03,280 --> 00:24:05,159
Speaker 1: on trial. And that's exactly what she started to do.

446
00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:11,280
Speaker 1: Starting she became an expert in this discipline of radio intelligence,

447
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:15,800
Speaker 1: which is intercepting the radio messages, solving the codes, using

448
00:24:15,800 --> 00:24:19,040
Speaker 1: the information to map the hit and network the darkened

449
00:24:19,080 --> 00:24:21,919
Speaker 1: underworld to throw light on it. And then once she

450
00:24:21,960 --> 00:24:24,280
Speaker 1: had solved the messages of these rum runners, a lot

451
00:24:24,280 --> 00:24:26,240
Speaker 1: of the times she would be called to testifying court

452
00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:29,199
Speaker 1: against them, which is incredible to think about, because you know,

453
00:24:29,280 --> 00:24:33,080
Speaker 1: it's this badite woman five ft three, you know, walking

454
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 1: to the front of a courtroom, you know, in a

455
00:24:35,080 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 1: pink dress and a pink hat with a flower pinned

456
00:24:37,359 --> 00:24:39,679
Speaker 1: to the brim, and she's sitting in the witness box

457
00:24:40,119 --> 00:24:42,880
Speaker 1: staring down, you know, in one case, more than twenty

458
00:24:43,880 --> 00:24:48,240
Speaker 1: agents of an organized crime syndicate and explaining to a

459
00:24:48,359 --> 00:24:51,200
Speaker 1: jury exactly what code breaking is and exactly how she

460
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: solved these messages, because she had to be able to

461
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 1: convince a jury that it was real science, that the

462
00:24:56,880 --> 00:24:59,640
Speaker 1: words that she was saying, the rum runners were saying,

463
00:24:59,640 --> 00:25:01,840
Speaker 1: we're her actual words, that she really was kind of

464
00:25:01,880 --> 00:25:03,919
Speaker 1: reading their thoughts, and that there was a science to it.

465
00:25:03,960 --> 00:25:07,520
Speaker 1: And so, uh So, Elizabeth became, for a brief time

466
00:25:08,119 --> 00:25:11,240
Speaker 1: in the in the early nineteen thirties, a front page story.

467
00:25:11,760 --> 00:25:13,639
Speaker 1: Uh and it was kind of an irresistible story for

468
00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:16,880
Speaker 1: reporters because you know they would they would describe her

469
00:25:16,920 --> 00:25:20,639
Speaker 1: as sort of like, uh, a small woman in a

470
00:25:20,680 --> 00:25:24,600
Speaker 1: pink dress who protects the United States or or you know,

471
00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:26,960
Speaker 1: a pretty little woman in a in a philly prank

472
00:25:27,040 --> 00:25:30,560
Speaker 1: pink dress. Um, and she and she would find herself

473
00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:33,400
Speaker 1: on the front page all of a sudden and testifying

474
00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:37,359
Speaker 1: in these spectacular trials. Wow. Yeah, And I think you

475
00:25:37,400 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: said at one point she was decoding up to what

476
00:25:39,760 --> 00:25:42,480
Speaker 1: like twenty five thousand messages in a year, So not

477
00:25:42,520 --> 00:25:46,720
Speaker 1: only was she good at this, but she was incredibly fast. Yes,

478
00:25:46,840 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 1: it was an astonishing volume of stuff. And and again

479
00:25:50,840 --> 00:25:53,160
Speaker 1: this is before computers, so so a lot of the

480
00:25:53,280 --> 00:25:56,800
Speaker 1: job was just this kind of daily grind of of

481
00:25:57,400 --> 00:25:59,920
Speaker 1: cranking through paper. So, Jason, I want to get into

482
00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:03,000
Speaker 1: uh jed or Hoover and how the FBI messed up

483
00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:05,399
Speaker 1: so many things and and all that story is fascinating,

484
00:26:05,440 --> 00:26:07,439
Speaker 1: But before that, can you tell us a little bit

485
00:26:07,480 --> 00:26:10,720
Speaker 1: about how you found the story and how you reported

486
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:14,080
Speaker 1: it because it obviously has uh, you know, a ton

487
00:26:14,119 --> 00:26:18,000
Speaker 1: of work went into this incredible book. Sure, so the

488
00:26:18,040 --> 00:26:22,119
Speaker 1: genesis of the story was really the Edward Snowden, Uh

489
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:26,520
Speaker 1: leaks in. So after the Snowden story broke, I started

490
00:26:26,560 --> 00:26:28,760
Speaker 1: reading about the n s A, right, and I think, um,

491
00:26:29,600 --> 00:26:30,960
Speaker 1: the history of the n s A. Where did it

492
00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,679
Speaker 1: come from? And like a lot of Americans, I think

493
00:26:33,720 --> 00:26:35,600
Speaker 1: I didn't really know much about the n s A.

494
00:26:35,720 --> 00:26:37,520
Speaker 1: And when you start reading about the history of the

495
00:26:37,600 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 1: n s A, all roads lead to William Friedman, Elizabeth's husband.

496
00:26:41,200 --> 00:26:43,600
Speaker 1: He's considered to be the godfather of the n s A.

497
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 1: That today, if you go to n s A headquarters

498
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:49,640
Speaker 1: in Fort Meade, Uh, there's an outside of the auditorium

499
00:26:49,640 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 1: that is named for William is a bronze bust of

500
00:26:52,520 --> 00:26:56,200
Speaker 1: his head. So William is like the guy, the guy

501
00:26:56,280 --> 00:26:58,800
Speaker 1: with the n s A. UM. But I also read

502
00:26:58,800 --> 00:27:00,760
Speaker 1: I also read that he that he had a wife

503
00:27:00,840 --> 00:27:05,239
Speaker 1: who was a codebreaker herself, and I thought that was interesting, right,

504
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:07,879
Speaker 1: like a husband and wife codebreaker. That's that's kind of unusual.

505
00:27:07,920 --> 00:27:11,120
Speaker 1: And I went looking for more information about Elizabeth, but

506
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:13,840
Speaker 1: there wasn't really much that I could find. And so

507
00:27:14,080 --> 00:27:18,000
Speaker 1: one day I drove down from my from my house

508
00:27:18,040 --> 00:27:23,399
Speaker 1: outside of Philly to the library in Lexington, Virginia, where

509
00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:28,160
Speaker 1: the Freedman's left their personal papers before they died and

510
00:27:28,200 --> 00:27:31,480
Speaker 1: William left, uh, you know, reams of stuff, boxes and

511
00:27:31,520 --> 00:27:34,359
Speaker 1: boxes and boxes and boxes. Elizabeth left a smaller amount

512
00:27:34,359 --> 00:27:38,480
Speaker 1: of material, but she still left twenty two boxes full

513
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:41,800
Speaker 1: of full of documents, and um, I asked if I

514
00:27:41,840 --> 00:27:45,000
Speaker 1: could see them, And so I started reading reading her stuff,

515
00:27:45,040 --> 00:27:48,240
Speaker 1: starting with Box one, File one. And you know, immediately

516
00:27:48,720 --> 00:27:50,800
Speaker 1: when I started reading her letters, I was just I

517
00:27:50,840 --> 00:27:52,879
Speaker 1: was just taken with her voice, you know, on on

518
00:27:52,920 --> 00:27:55,920
Speaker 1: the page a hundred years ago, reading reading reading her

519
00:27:55,920 --> 00:27:58,880
Speaker 1: words in her own hand. And she's just so sort

520
00:27:58,880 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 1: of funny, witty, warm, sometimes sort of biting, sarcastic. She

521
00:28:03,640 --> 00:28:07,520
Speaker 1: could be very savage on the bag sometimes and um,

522
00:28:07,960 --> 00:28:10,479
Speaker 1: and I was just captivated with with her voice. But

523
00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 1: you know, the more I read in those twenty two boxes,

524
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: the more I realized that, um, you know, not only

525
00:28:17,080 --> 00:28:20,240
Speaker 1: was this the story of uh, you know, a remarkable woman,

526
00:28:21,000 --> 00:28:23,959
Speaker 1: um who had an amazing kind of dramatic, kind of

527
00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:29,080
Speaker 1: irresistibly you know, cinematic career. I mean, a code breaking

528
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:33,760
Speaker 1: Quaker poet who caught gangsters. It's it's it's kind of irresistible, right,

529
00:28:34,400 --> 00:28:37,080
Speaker 1: But I also realized that, you know, she was really

530
00:28:37,080 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: a hidden woman behind the birth and the growth of

531
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:44,080
Speaker 1: the intelligence uh community in America, because she really was

532
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:47,680
Speaker 1: present at the beginning of a lot of things that

533
00:28:47,680 --> 00:28:50,200
Speaker 1: that today are very important. And so I thought it

534
00:28:50,240 --> 00:28:52,080
Speaker 1: was you know, it was both kind of like a

535
00:28:52,520 --> 00:28:56,640
Speaker 1: you know, an incredible just human story that hadn't been told,

536
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:58,880
Speaker 1: but I also thought it was it was important in

537
00:28:59,200 --> 00:29:02,080
Speaker 1: terms of the bigger picture of American intelligence. That the

538
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:06,320
Speaker 1: thing about the twenty two boxes that I found at

539
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: the library that Elizabeth had left was, uh, there was

540
00:29:10,680 --> 00:29:13,200
Speaker 1: nothing in World War about World War Two in those boxes,

541
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: so there was essentially a gap between nineteen thirty nine

542
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:20,240
Speaker 1: and so what she did during World War Two, what

543
00:29:20,280 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: I found in those records is that, um, she was

544
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:30,280
Speaker 1: hunting Nazi spies. So after Hitler invaded Poland, Nazi spies

545
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 1: began spreading out into the Western hemisphere, and uh, most

546
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,800
Speaker 1: of them set up shop in South America. South America

547
00:29:38,000 --> 00:29:39,680
Speaker 1: was a good place for them to be because it

548
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: was kind of upper grabs, it was neutral, uh, and

549
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:47,040
Speaker 1: it was close to North America. So it was a

550
00:29:47,080 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: good listening post for Nazi spies to gather intelligence about

551
00:29:50,720 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 1: what America was doing and what Britain was doing. There

552
00:29:54,080 --> 00:29:56,520
Speaker 1: were also a lot of sort of right wing movements

553
00:29:56,520 --> 00:29:59,880
Speaker 1: in individual South American countries that kind of resembled fascism,

554
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,560
Speaker 1: So there was some natural sympathy for the fascist cause.

555
00:30:02,800 --> 00:30:06,920
Speaker 1: They're also millions of German columnists already living there, so

556
00:30:07,040 --> 00:30:09,080
Speaker 1: Nazis had kind of a natural advantage. It was fertile

557
00:30:09,120 --> 00:30:12,200
Speaker 1: soil for Nazi spies to set up. And and what

558
00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,320
Speaker 1: they did is when they when they went to South America,

559
00:30:14,360 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 1: they started to build clandestine radio stations, pirate radio stations,

560
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:21,200
Speaker 1: and they would transmit their intelligence reports back to Berlin

561
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:26,120
Speaker 1: and Hamburg um over the radio. And uh. It was

562
00:30:26,160 --> 00:30:29,160
Speaker 1: the FBI's job, Jagger Hoover's job at that point, to

563
00:30:29,200 --> 00:30:33,959
Speaker 1: try to stop these Nazi spies. The problem was he

564
00:30:34,000 --> 00:30:37,560
Speaker 1: wasn't very good at it. So um. There's a famous story.

565
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:41,560
Speaker 1: The FBI created a whole new division in to try

566
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:44,320
Speaker 1: to go after Nazi spies in South America. It was

567
00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:46,840
Speaker 1: called the s I S. And the first couple of

568
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:50,320
Speaker 1: FBI agents who went to South America, they got off

569
00:30:50,360 --> 00:30:52,440
Speaker 1: the plane and they were immediately spotted by the locals

570
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: and and made for FBI guys. You know, the locals.

571
00:30:55,280 --> 00:30:57,120
Speaker 1: The locals looked at them and they they looked like

572
00:30:57,200 --> 00:31:00,200
Speaker 1: FBI guys they had seen in the movies. They had

573
00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:02,760
Speaker 1: the snap brim hats and then you know, uh, you know,

574
00:31:02,800 --> 00:31:04,640
Speaker 1: the square jaws and everything, and they were really pale.

575
00:31:04,680 --> 00:31:07,880
Speaker 1: They didn't have they didn't speak the languages. Um. You know,

576
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 1: there's a story about one of the guys who had

577
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 1: taken a language course in New York in preparation for

578
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: his posting to South America. The the FBI had taught

579
00:31:16,280 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 1: him Spanish, and then he was posted to Brazil and

580
00:31:18,920 --> 00:31:21,040
Speaker 1: he got off the plane in Brazil, you know, disappointed

581
00:31:21,080 --> 00:31:23,760
Speaker 1: to discover that the language that's spoken in Brazil is

582
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:27,520
Speaker 1: mainly Portuguese and not spanning. So these guys were completely lost,

583
00:31:27,600 --> 00:31:30,800
Speaker 1: right the FBI, Yeah, they were never they were never

584
00:31:30,800 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 1: going to be able to find these Nazi spies using

585
00:31:33,600 --> 00:31:38,320
Speaker 1: kind of old school FBI techniques of developing confidential informants

586
00:31:38,400 --> 00:31:40,120
Speaker 1: and that sort of thing. What they really needed was

587
00:31:40,160 --> 00:31:42,920
Speaker 1: code breaking, right, they needed a technical advantage. They needed

588
00:31:42,920 --> 00:31:46,760
Speaker 1: to intercept these radio messages, uh, solve the messages and

589
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,440
Speaker 1: light up the darkened underworld by by kind of stealing

590
00:31:49,440 --> 00:31:53,000
Speaker 1: the thoughts directly from the lips of the spies. Um.

591
00:31:53,040 --> 00:31:55,240
Speaker 1: But they couldn't do that because the FBI didn't have

592
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:58,800
Speaker 1: Because the FBI didn't have a code breaking team, they

593
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:02,239
Speaker 1: had no code breaking compa city, They had no ability

594
00:32:02,320 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 1: uh to break codes and to read the messages of

595
00:32:04,440 --> 00:32:08,160
Speaker 1: what these Nazi spies were saying. But Elizabeth Friedman did

596
00:32:08,600 --> 00:32:11,959
Speaker 1: because you know, she had spent the last fifteen years

597
00:32:12,640 --> 00:32:16,160
Speaker 1: uh kind of doing target practice against rum runners and

598
00:32:16,240 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 1: drug smuggles. She she had developed this expertise at intercepting

599
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:24,880
Speaker 1: radio messages, solving them and mapping these underworld networks because

600
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:27,880
Speaker 1: that had been her job during the twenties and thirties

601
00:32:27,920 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: to to fight smuggling and so UM, it wasn't that

602
00:32:30,880 --> 00:32:33,480
Speaker 1: she set out to hunt Nazi spies. It's just that

603
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:35,400
Speaker 1: she she happened to have the right set of skills

604
00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 1: the right moment, you know, and in she was ready

605
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:40,960
Speaker 1: to go. And so so what ended up happening is

606
00:32:41,000 --> 00:32:44,760
Speaker 1: the FBI relied on Elizabeth and UM and the code

607
00:32:44,760 --> 00:32:46,800
Speaker 1: breaking team that she had built within the Coast Guard

608
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:49,840
Speaker 1: UH code breakers that she had trained she had led

609
00:32:50,520 --> 00:32:53,960
Speaker 1: UM relying on them to as as kind of the

610
00:32:54,000 --> 00:32:56,600
Speaker 1: technical back end of this of this hunt for Nazi

611
00:32:56,680 --> 00:33:01,000
Speaker 1: spies in South America. Elizabeth and her team monitor these

612
00:33:01,080 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 1: clandestine radio circuits used by Nazi spies, solve the messages,

613
00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:11,200
Speaker 1: and provide the translated English plain texts to allied intelligence agencies,

614
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:15,800
Speaker 1: including the Army, the Navy, the FBI, and also British intelligence.

615
00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:17,760
Speaker 1: And by the end of the war, they had monitored

616
00:33:17,760 --> 00:33:22,360
Speaker 1: about fifty different UH clandestine radio circuits used by the Nazis,

617
00:33:22,400 --> 00:33:26,720
Speaker 1: solved four thousand messages. You know, these messages were incredibly

618
00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:31,360
Speaker 1: important in ultimately destroying these Nazi spy rings in South

619
00:33:31,400 --> 00:33:35,560
Speaker 1: America and eliminating a dangerous threat. You know, Elizabeth and

620
00:33:35,760 --> 00:33:39,800
Speaker 1: her teammates really brought these Nazi spies to Ruin Pick

621
00:33:39,880 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 1: to pick their networks apart, piece by piece, destroyed them,

622
00:33:44,480 --> 00:33:46,880
Speaker 1: you know, neutralized the threat. And then after the war,

623
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:51,320
Speaker 1: Jagger Hoover you know, stuck up his hand and went

624
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: out to the public on kind of a publicity campaign

625
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,800
Speaker 1: taking credit for all of that, and he said, you know, America,

626
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:01,840
Speaker 1: the FBI saved you for on this dangerous Nazi spy

627
00:34:01,880 --> 00:34:06,560
Speaker 1: invasion in South America, and UH, You're welcome. And that's

628
00:34:06,640 --> 00:34:08,960
Speaker 1: kind of the story that has been told ever since,

629
00:34:09,120 --> 00:34:11,960
Speaker 1: is that is that the FBI did UH, did all

630
00:34:12,000 --> 00:34:17,000
Speaker 1: of the hard dangerous, brave. Uh, you know, brilliant work

631
00:34:17,080 --> 00:34:19,480
Speaker 1: of catching these Nazi splies of South America. But I

632
00:34:19,520 --> 00:34:23,520
Speaker 1: think the truth is that the real driver was Elizabeth Freedman.

633
00:34:23,600 --> 00:34:25,879
Speaker 1: It was this. It was this American mother of two

634
00:34:25,880 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 1: who figured out how to sweep the Western hemisphere free

635
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,520
Speaker 1: of undercover Nazis. And uh, and yet she never got

636
00:34:32,560 --> 00:34:35,359
Speaker 1: the credit for it because because Hoover got out there

637
00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: in front. Welcome back to Part time Genius. We're chatting

638
00:34:51,480 --> 00:34:55,520
Speaker 1: with Jason Fagoni, the author of The Woman who Smashed Codes. Okay, Jason,

639
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:59,120
Speaker 1: So she, you know, helps through World War One obviously

640
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 1: de codes, know what, as you said, twenty five thousand

641
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: messages a year in between the world wars at times,

642
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,399
Speaker 1: and and helped defeat the Nazis in World War Two.

643
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,920
Speaker 1: It's just an unbelievable story. And then you said, after

644
00:35:11,960 --> 00:35:14,600
Speaker 1: all of this, she and William kind of come back

645
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:17,239
Speaker 1: to the Shakespeare project later in their lives, and and

646
00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:22,920
Speaker 1: why was this? Yes? So after the war, Uh, William

647
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:25,440
Speaker 1: was one of the people who helped form the National

648
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,880
Speaker 1: Security Agency that the team that he had created and

649
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: built at the Army, which during World War Two achieved

650
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:38,000
Speaker 1: essentially the impossible by breaking the Japanese diplomatic code, which

651
00:35:38,000 --> 00:35:39,960
Speaker 1: was called Purple, which she gave the Allies a huge

652
00:35:39,960 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 1: advantage and probably shortened the war. Yeah, he did all

653
00:35:42,440 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 1: these heroic things during World War Two, and then after

654
00:35:45,080 --> 00:35:47,759
Speaker 1: the war helped to create the n s A. His

655
00:35:47,760 --> 00:35:50,120
Speaker 1: his army unit was kind of absorbed into this thing

656
00:35:50,160 --> 00:35:52,440
Speaker 1: that became the n s A. But as the n

657
00:35:52,560 --> 00:35:56,399
Speaker 1: s A kind of began to grow, um it it

658
00:35:56,440 --> 00:36:03,279
Speaker 1: grew beyond what what he uh felt like he could bear. Um.

659
00:36:03,360 --> 00:36:07,319
Speaker 1: He became a critic internally of some of the n

660
00:36:07,400 --> 00:36:10,880
Speaker 1: s AS policies and it's uh it's directions. He he

661
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 1: became concerned that that too many documents were being classified.

662
00:36:15,880 --> 00:36:18,799
Speaker 1: Um he felt like the NISA was collecting too much information.

663
00:36:19,280 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: He felt like they would never ever be able to

664
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,799
Speaker 1: sift all the information they were collecting for actionable intelligence

665
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:28,400
Speaker 1: and UH and it really troubled him and uh and

666
00:36:28,400 --> 00:36:32,320
Speaker 1: and throughout the nineteen fifties, as the Cold War UH

667
00:36:32,760 --> 00:36:36,200
Speaker 1: kind of sharpened in d C, atmosphere of paranoia grew.

668
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:42,400
Speaker 1: Um William became more and more despairing about his relationship

669
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:46,440
Speaker 1: with this organization and with the government more broadly. That

670
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:48,680
Speaker 1: he that he felt he had always served very loyal

671
00:36:48,920 --> 00:36:52,799
Speaker 1: loyally and um, you know it this kind of culminated

672
00:36:52,840 --> 00:36:58,400
Speaker 1: in this famous, famous day in eight when the n

673
00:36:58,480 --> 00:37:01,640
Speaker 1: s A sent agents to the personal home of William

674
00:37:01,640 --> 00:37:05,919
Speaker 1: and Elizabeth Freedman and removed documents and books from their

675
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:08,920
Speaker 1: from their private library, uh, saying saying that they were

676
00:37:08,920 --> 00:37:11,279
Speaker 1: classified and needed needed to be moved to a higher

677
00:37:11,360 --> 00:37:13,440
Speaker 1: level of classification the free you know, A lot of

678
00:37:13,440 --> 00:37:16,400
Speaker 1: the a lot of the materials were so old that

679
00:37:16,440 --> 00:37:19,560
Speaker 1: they dated back to the First World War. UH. William

680
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:22,960
Speaker 1: was baffled, you know that that the n s A

681
00:37:23,040 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 1: would uh would want to classify these things because they

682
00:37:26,040 --> 00:37:28,000
Speaker 1: were so old and there they were really of only

683
00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 1: historical interest, he thought. But um, you know, they they

684
00:37:31,000 --> 00:37:35,080
Speaker 1: found this to be kind of intolerable, a uh, you know,

685
00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:38,400
Speaker 1: an invasion of their privacy. And um, I think it

686
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:44,080
Speaker 1: motivated him and and and probably Elizabeth too to pull

687
00:37:44,120 --> 00:37:47,359
Speaker 1: away from from government work more and more and back

688
00:37:47,400 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: to personal projects. And so one of the personal projects

689
00:37:50,040 --> 00:37:53,239
Speaker 1: that they could could talk about that they could work on. Uh.

690
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:56,719
Speaker 1: In this atmosphere of kind of deepening paranoia, security and

691
00:37:56,719 --> 00:37:59,560
Speaker 1: classification was something that had nothing to do with government

692
00:37:59,560 --> 00:38:02,520
Speaker 1: codebreak all is something that's something that went back to,

693
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:06,719
Speaker 1: uh to their original kind of wild goose chase of

694
00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:10,600
Speaker 1: their youth at Number Bank Laboratories. So so you know,

695
00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:13,640
Speaker 1: they and what they did is they went back to this, uh,

696
00:38:13,880 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: to this theory that George Fabian had always tried to

697
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:19,240
Speaker 1: get them to prove this theory that that Francis Bacon

698
00:38:19,280 --> 00:38:22,240
Speaker 1: had inserted secret messages in the works of Shakespeare and

699
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:24,640
Speaker 1: uh and they just demolished it. They used all of

700
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:28,040
Speaker 1: their ability, all of their uh, all of their kind

701
00:38:28,040 --> 00:38:30,880
Speaker 1: of savagery on the page to to sort of go

702
00:38:31,000 --> 00:38:34,239
Speaker 1: through every piece of piece of purported evidence for for

703
00:38:34,280 --> 00:38:37,640
Speaker 1: this theory and uh and just and just destroy it

704
00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:40,879
Speaker 1: page by page. And it is wonderful. And they wrote

705
00:38:40,880 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: it together. Um, it's a very funny book. It's it's

706
00:38:43,719 --> 00:38:49,080
Speaker 1: it's a very uh sort of precise book and uh

707
00:38:49,120 --> 00:38:50,960
Speaker 1: and and that was the thing that brought them back

708
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:55,920
Speaker 1: together working together after decades of of kind of growing

709
00:38:56,000 --> 00:38:59,560
Speaker 1: growing apart because of their uh, you know, increasingly important

710
00:39:00,040 --> 00:39:03,440
Speaker 1: purity duties for the United States. Wow. Well, I have

711
00:39:03,520 --> 00:39:05,839
Speaker 1: to say, Jason, in reading this book, this is this

712
00:39:05,920 --> 00:39:08,640
Speaker 1: is one of those history books that as you're reading it,

713
00:39:08,719 --> 00:39:12,960
Speaker 1: you can almost see and feel the blood, sweat and

714
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,000
Speaker 1: tears that went into this project. It's not only beautifully written,

715
00:39:17,040 --> 00:39:20,320
Speaker 1: but you can tell just all of the the intense

716
00:39:20,360 --> 00:39:23,520
Speaker 1: amount of research that you've done to put into this book,

717
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:25,840
Speaker 1: and and for that, I honestly, I just want to

718
00:39:25,840 --> 00:39:28,240
Speaker 1: say thanks, because it is one of the best books

719
00:39:28,280 --> 00:39:30,439
Speaker 1: I've read in a long time. And I do hope

720
00:39:30,440 --> 00:39:33,640
Speaker 1: our our readers will check out The Woman who Smashed Codes.

721
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:37,439
Speaker 1: It's an incredible story. So Elizabeth died in nineteen eighty

722
00:39:37,520 --> 00:39:40,400
Speaker 1: at the age of eighty eight, mostly unacknowledged for her

723
00:39:40,440 --> 00:39:44,080
Speaker 1: foundation laying cryptographic word, but you know you stumbled into

724
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:46,439
Speaker 1: her story and and for that and all the work

725
00:39:46,480 --> 00:39:49,399
Speaker 1: you put into this, I just want to say thanks. Oh,

726
00:39:49,440 --> 00:39:53,600
Speaker 1: thank you guys. I I really appreciate your um. I

727
00:39:53,600 --> 00:39:55,840
Speaker 1: don't know your questions were great. It's clearly that you

728
00:39:55,880 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 1: paid a lot of paid a lot of attention to

729
00:39:57,640 --> 00:40:01,080
Speaker 1: the book and and honestly, it was it was a

730
00:40:01,160 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 1: joy doing the research. It was it was one of

731
00:40:03,000 --> 00:40:07,280
Speaker 1: those projects that every journalist and every writer hopes to

732
00:40:07,320 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 1: stumble across, and I feel lucky to have to have

733
00:40:10,800 --> 00:40:22,600
Speaker 1: gotten to do it. M H. Welcome back to part

734
00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:25,520
Speaker 1: time genius. Now we've learned a ton today, but you know,

735
00:40:25,600 --> 00:40:27,479
Speaker 1: we can't wrap this thing up without a good old

736
00:40:27,560 --> 00:40:31,600
Speaker 1: fashioned backed off. So you want to kick us off, mango, Yeah, definitely. So.

737
00:40:31,880 --> 00:40:33,760
Speaker 1: I know Jason talked about this a little bit earlier,

738
00:40:33,800 --> 00:40:36,759
Speaker 1: but I loved reading about how Elizabeth and William taught

739
00:40:36,800 --> 00:40:39,600
Speaker 1: their kids the basics of cryptography, like as early as

740
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 1: seven years old. So when their daughter Barbara was off

741
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:45,120
Speaker 1: at sleepaway camp, she'd send home letters and code, and

742
00:40:45,160 --> 00:40:48,160
Speaker 1: the Freedman's would use codes and ciphers and their Christmas

743
00:40:48,200 --> 00:40:51,200
Speaker 1: cards and sometimes they even had cipher parties where their

744
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:53,399
Speaker 1: guests would have to solve the cipher just to figure

745
00:40:53,440 --> 00:40:56,200
Speaker 1: out what would be served for dinner. Wow, that's pretty awesome,

746
00:40:56,239 --> 00:40:58,360
Speaker 1: And actually it's kind of neat to see this coming

747
00:40:58,400 --> 00:41:00,640
Speaker 1: back in a way with like these brave gout type

748
00:41:00,640 --> 00:41:02,959
Speaker 1: places that people will go with their friends to play.

749
00:41:02,960 --> 00:41:07,120
Speaker 1: Have you seen these exit the room things? Yeah, yeah, exactly.

750
00:41:07,120 --> 00:41:09,080
Speaker 1: I've never been to one, but they seem pretty interesting.

751
00:41:09,680 --> 00:41:11,160
Speaker 1: All right. Well, I know we've been talking about the

752
00:41:11,200 --> 00:41:13,880
Speaker 1: woman who Smashed Codes, but there was another book published

753
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:16,680
Speaker 1: this fall that's more generally about women code breakers, and

754
00:41:16,719 --> 00:41:20,040
Speaker 1: it's called Code Girls. The Untold Story of the American

755
00:41:20,120 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: women code breakers of World War Two, and it's by

756
00:41:23,040 --> 00:41:25,360
Speaker 1: Liz Mundy, So I think i'll share just a couple

757
00:41:25,400 --> 00:41:27,360
Speaker 1: of facts from that. And it does tell the story

758
00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:30,520
Speaker 1: of the more than ten thousand college students and school teachers,

759
00:41:30,600 --> 00:41:33,080
Speaker 1: among other women who were recruited to really be the

760
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:35,719
Speaker 1: backbone of our intelligence efforts. But one of the things

761
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:38,400
Speaker 1: I thought was so interesting is that it was a huge,

762
00:41:38,480 --> 00:41:42,120
Speaker 1: huge advantage for the Allied powers because unlike the Allied

763
00:41:42,160 --> 00:41:44,440
Speaker 1: Powers who put all of these women to work, the

764
00:41:44,480 --> 00:41:47,160
Speaker 1: Access Powers didn't do the same. And their estimates that

765
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:49,600
Speaker 1: it shortened the war by as many as two or

766
00:41:49,600 --> 00:41:52,360
Speaker 1: three years. Oh wow, that's incredible. So one of the

767
00:41:52,360 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: more strange figures that Elizabeth took down was this woman

768
00:41:54,800 --> 00:41:57,480
Speaker 1: known as Doll Lady, and she discovered the secret code

769
00:41:57,560 --> 00:41:59,600
Speaker 1: hidden in the letters of this New York woman named

770
00:42:00,080 --> 00:42:03,839
Speaker 1: Beelvolye Dickinson, who was acting as this Japanese spy. It's

771
00:42:03,840 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 1: an amazing story. So Dickinson owned a doll shop and

772
00:42:06,480 --> 00:42:09,239
Speaker 1: would send letters to an address in Buenos Aires, and

773
00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:11,680
Speaker 1: she'd be talking about various dolls in her collection. But

774
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:14,839
Speaker 1: Elizabeth realized that her references to like English dolls and

775
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:17,640
Speaker 1: foreign dolls were actually a way to communicate about the Allies.

776
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:20,200
Speaker 1: And the doll lady was eventually sentenced to ten years

777
00:42:20,239 --> 00:42:23,520
Speaker 1: in prison and find after being charged with espionage. She

778
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 1: got that doll lady. Wow, what a strange character. I know,

779
00:42:26,719 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 1: it just confirms my theories that adults who love dolls

780
00:42:29,040 --> 00:42:31,560
Speaker 1: shouldn't be trusted. That it's a good that's a good one.

781
00:42:31,640 --> 00:42:33,880
Speaker 1: I go, maybe we'll do a whole episode on that

782
00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:36,279
Speaker 1: at some point. All right, Well, back to Monday's books.

783
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:38,680
Speaker 1: So she writes about how the branches of military were

784
00:42:38,719 --> 00:42:41,160
Speaker 1: different from one another and who they allowed to be

785
00:42:41,200 --> 00:42:44,600
Speaker 1: code breakers and who they didn't. So the Navy, for example,

786
00:42:44,640 --> 00:42:47,560
Speaker 1: didn't allow non whites. They didn't want Jewish women, they

787
00:42:47,600 --> 00:42:50,759
Speaker 1: didn't want African American women. The Army, on the other hand,

788
00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 1: did allow non whites. However, not surprisingly, these groups were segregated.

789
00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:58,040
Speaker 1: And it was really frustrating from Moundy as she was

790
00:42:58,080 --> 00:43:01,040
Speaker 1: doing the research because there's no substantial records out there

791
00:43:01,239 --> 00:43:03,399
Speaker 1: other than a few photos, and you can actually see

792
00:43:03,440 --> 00:43:05,560
Speaker 1: these in Monday's book, and you know, it shows a

793
00:43:05,640 --> 00:43:08,319
Speaker 1: room full of African American code breakers, most of them

794
00:43:08,320 --> 00:43:10,799
Speaker 1: being women. So, as Jason explained to us, by the

795
00:43:10,840 --> 00:43:13,840
Speaker 1: early nineteen twenties, there were only three code breaking units

796
00:43:13,840 --> 00:43:16,720
Speaker 1: in the government and fewer than fifty employees, and about

797
00:43:16,719 --> 00:43:19,440
Speaker 1: half of those employees worked for the State Department, and

798
00:43:19,480 --> 00:43:21,799
Speaker 1: the Army and Navy had the other two. But in

799
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: nine the Secretary of State decided to shut down the

800
00:43:25,000 --> 00:43:28,840
Speaker 1: State Department's unit because, as he put it, quote, gentlemen

801
00:43:28,840 --> 00:43:32,799
Speaker 1: do not read each other's mail. Wow, what a strange thing,

802
00:43:33,560 --> 00:43:35,440
Speaker 1: all right. Well, one of the other things Monday shows

803
00:43:35,440 --> 00:43:37,880
Speaker 1: and Code Girls is that unlike this common notion that

804
00:43:37,880 --> 00:43:40,439
Speaker 1: there are all these big and exciting kind of ah

805
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:43,960
Speaker 1: ha moments in code breaking, it's actually much more similar

806
00:43:44,000 --> 00:43:46,319
Speaker 1: to a marathon. And she does a great job of

807
00:43:46,640 --> 00:43:50,239
Speaker 1: showing how they were working often around the clock, just

808
00:43:50,440 --> 00:43:53,560
Speaker 1: looking for patterns and searching and searching. And it really

809
00:43:53,680 --> 00:43:56,479
Speaker 1: was this marathon work that had played a huge role

810
00:43:56,520 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: in helping to shorten the war, as I mentioned earlier,

811
00:43:58,800 --> 00:44:01,279
Speaker 1: because the Allies just had a much better idea of

812
00:44:01,320 --> 00:44:03,680
Speaker 1: what the Japanese and Germans We're planning to do each

813
00:44:03,680 --> 00:44:05,840
Speaker 1: step along the way. And I bet you want a

814
00:44:05,840 --> 00:44:08,960
Speaker 1: carbo load before each stage. With that definitely definitely. So

815
00:44:09,000 --> 00:44:11,120
Speaker 1: I know we like to talk about the best job titles,

816
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: so I had to tell you about uh. When Elizabeth

817
00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:16,280
Speaker 1: was tapped to head up the Coast Guards codebreaking team,

818
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:18,040
Speaker 1: not only was she the first woman to run a

819
00:44:18,120 --> 00:44:20,640
Speaker 1: US government code breaking unit, but she was also given

820
00:44:20,680 --> 00:44:24,680
Speaker 1: a business card that said cryptanalyst and charge US Coast Guard.

821
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:27,040
Speaker 1: That's one of the best titles I've ever heard. I

822
00:44:27,080 --> 00:44:29,520
Speaker 1: cannot beat that. So I'm gonna give you today's fact

823
00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:32,279
Speaker 1: off Mango. Thank you, thank you. All Right, that's it

824
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:34,920
Speaker 1: for today's show. A special thanks to Jocelyn Sears for

825
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 1: her excellent research help with this episode. Now, if you

826
00:44:37,520 --> 00:44:39,600
Speaker 1: want to share any of your favorite code breaking facts,

827
00:44:39,600 --> 00:44:41,839
Speaker 1: you can always email us at part Time Genius at

828
00:44:41,840 --> 00:44:44,600
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com or call us on our

829
00:44:44,680 --> 00:44:47,960
Speaker 1: seven fact hop line one eight four four pt Genius.

830
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:50,200
Speaker 1: You can also hit us up on Facebook or Twitter,

831
00:44:50,440 --> 00:44:51,799
Speaker 1: and don't forget to let us know if you'd like

832
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:53,480
Speaker 1: to come on to play a quiz with us sometime.

833
00:44:53,680 --> 00:45:09,880
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening, Yeah, thanks again for listening. Part Time

834
00:45:09,960 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and wouldn't

835
00:45:12,200 --> 00:45:14,960
Speaker 1: be possible without several brilliant people who do the important

836
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,000
Speaker 1: things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christa McNeil does

837
00:45:18,000 --> 00:45:20,400
Speaker 1: the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and

838
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:23,239
Speaker 1: does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Rowland does the

839
00:45:23,280 --> 00:45:26,400
Speaker 1: exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher, with

840
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,600
Speaker 1: support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan Brown

841
00:45:29,640 --> 00:45:31,759
Speaker 1: and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the show

842
00:45:31,760 --> 00:45:34,000
Speaker 1: to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like what

843
00:45:34,040 --> 00:45:36,040
Speaker 1: you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you really

844
00:45:36,080 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave a

845
00:45:37,840 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: good review for us. Do you do? We forget Jason

846
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: Jason who